BREAKING: Bashir Problem Now a Non-Problem

For the non-twitterati, Omar al-Bashir has — unsurprisingly — cancelled his trip to the UN. That decision reflects an underappreciated “soft power” aspect of the ICC: even an unexecuted arrest warrant limits the freedom of a suspect facing charges. There may be no reasonable prospect of Bashir being arrested anytime soon. But there is also no reasonable prospect that he will be traveling outside of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East anytime soon either, making it much more difficult for him to function as an effective head of state. With luck, his political party will eventually decide he’s more trouble than he’s worth — at which point he may well end up in the ICC’s dock. (A lesson Mr. Milosevic learned the hard way.)